The first Core M laptop paints a depressing, mediocre picture for Intel’s Broadwell

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To say there’s a great deal riding on the launch of Intel’s Core M is something of an understatement. The chip — and Intel’s 14nm hardware — is nearly a year late. The delays have raised investor questions about Intel’s ability to maintain or leverage a technological advantage over its rivals, and while Intel’s own demos have looked amazing, these always take place on very friendly turf under controlled conditions. There’s no substitute for shipping hardware, and that’s why a great many eyes have turned to Lenovo’s Yoga 3 Pro — the first shipping device with Broadwell inside. Somewhat unfortunately, this critical first system doesn’t seem to live up to Intel’s hype.

While many reviewers praise its diminutive size, low weight, and display quality, complaints about battery life, heavy throttling, and poor performance are common. Curiously, reviewers are completely split on whether or not the system even has a fan. Some reputable outlets make specific note that the computer lacks one, while others complain about the sound level. What everyone agrees on is that the system throttles constantly, possibly in part because Lenovo chose to set a 3.5W target for the chip rather than the 4.5W TDP that Intel specifies (the Yoga 3 Pro allows for bursts of up to 12W total system consumption, however).

Lenovo’s claim of “up to nine hours” on battery life is farcical. WindowsCentral.com claims 5-6 hours, at the very most. PC Pro hit eight hours, but only by turning screen brightness to its lowest levels; turn brightness up and battery life plummets. UltraBookReview reports that under various workloads battery life ranges from 6 hours to 4 hours 40 minutes depending on workload. Part of the problem is Lenovo’s decision to equip a 44 watt-hour (Wh) battery — the 13-inch MacBook Air, which tends to be the go-to comparison for a system in this price range, has a 54 Wh battery.

Various and sundry other problems with unclear causes

Multiple reviewers have commented that the laptop runs remarkably poorly in Chrome, that its gaming performance is sometimes a regression over the Yoga Pro 2 and other Intel laptops, and that the Yoga Pro 3 is incontrovertibly slower than its predecessor. The overall picture painted by multiple reviews is of a product straining and gasping to manage more than a minimally acceptable level of performance. This is in direct opposition to the sleek, razor-thin Core M devices that Intel has previously demoed.

These issues don’t necessarily point to an underlying problem with Broadwell, however. It’s possible that Lenovo’s own software utilities for power management are improperly cutting clock speeds where the system needs them, throttling down hard in the middle of workloads where throttling shouldn’t occur, then failing to adjust power consumption in other areas. On a desktop, no one cares if the southbridge draws an extra 0.5W due to a driver flaw, but in a laptop with a 12W power ceiling, 0.5W is 4% of your power budget. The fact that Chrome runs poorly — markedly worse than Internet Explorer — could be indicative of GPU driver issues, while the 3.5W TDP target Lenovo apparently locked in would explain the throttling behavior. The Core M-5Y70 chip inside the Yoga 3 Pro already clocks its GPU down to 100MHz, as opposed to the 200MHz target of other ultrabooks — and if the chip is getting stuck at 100MHz on the graphics core while simultaneously driving a 3800×1800 screen, that would explain a great deal of sluggish behavior.

One of the reasons we can’t tell if the problems reviewers are experiencing are fundamental issues with Broadwell, or caused by Lenovo’s bad system design, is because the history of PC laptops is basically the history of terrible design decisions writ large upon an unsuspecting but increasingly unhappy populace. Granted, we see this trend across other device categories as well, but it’s always been the most pronounced in laptops. Boutique manufacturers use CPUs and GPUs that their chassis either can’t cool or can’t cool without sounding like jet turbines. Manufacturers opt for lower-durability construction and weaker hardware in the name of shaving a scant millimeter off a measurement. In this case, Lenovo cuts battery capacity, tosses in a high resolution display with an insane power draw, tightens the screws on the CPU to compensate, and then wraps the display in flimsy construction that multiple websites call out as flawed.

Why?

Because laptop OEMs are gutless and sell on specs, not on experience. Because even when they build $1200 hardware, they infuse that price point with $300 thinking. Crank up the resolution, but use a panel with a bad color gamut. Slash the thickness, but gut the battery life. Charge four figures, but refuse to remove the spyware and shovelware that infest most OEM laptops like a bad case of fleas. Include a terrible webcam, because you can get away with saving 20 cents on the part. Improve the specs on individual parts, but don’t combine those improvements into superior products.

I’m not saying Core M/Broadwell doesn’t have a problem. It’s possible that these weak performance figures and throttling issues are either caused by Intel drivers or by overly aggressive chip positioning. More laptop launches and reviews will establish which of these is actually the problem, but if I had to bet, I’d bet that the issues are mostly on Lenovo’s side. The CPU/SoC, for all its complexity, is still just one component in a complex system — and too many of the laptop’s issues may have little to do with the CPU core. Wall socket power consumption suggests, for example, that the chip does draw 3-4W in light workloads — well in line with Intel’s estimates.

Intel is investigating the issue and preliminary indications are that the situation may be partly resolved through a BIOS update. We’re in the process of reaching out to Lenovo and will update when we hear back.

Tagged In

Broadwell is being rushed. I knew Intel fabs couldn’t be that far ahead of TSMC (which is at 20-22nm and struggling to get high yields). 14nm seems like a pipedream for this year at any significant yields. This just proves it.

gary oak

yeah, the very first device to have broadwell does poorly because broadwell itself is flawed, forget all possibilities of rushed drivers or a mistakes on Lenovo’s behalf, it’s inherently a flawed architecture because the very first device with it did poorly, which means every other device ever that uses it will fail.

Zepid

Broadwell itself isn’t flawed. It just isn’t ready. The reason we only have Broadwell M is because the yields are super low and it has been delayed. Intel pushed the timetable up and made up the M monicre for the half-assed low yield chips. Clearly they weren’t even ready for those.

RandomCruiser

Broadwell was fine since january this year and now is yielding at a decent level. The real issue is the tablet around it, it must meet precise specifics that sometimes OEMs are not able to follow to not spend too much money on development.
This is the reason we not see AMD 19W Kaveri machines around, AMD specifics are very very accurate and restricted. OEMs not want do research and development, this is a well known thing.
Look at how accurate and perfect is Apple iPad structure and cooling solution, it costs a pile of money to develop.

Zergling

Dude… You can’t compare this chip with Apple’s iPad. It is not that their cooling solution cost a lot of money, the architechture of the chips are entirely different. Intels is x86, iPad is ARM. ARM is naturally less powerful and more energy efficient. It is not iPad’s structure.

RandomCruiser

Please don’t troll on this argument. The power consumption discussion was solved as Intel adopted the same power management triks of ARM. Obviously Broadwell must run slower at the same power consumption cause an higher IPC and larger compute resources. ARM is not naturally low power, this mith is old and doomed since very first 32nm Intel SOC. Not even ARM holdings in person is leveraging on this topic anymore…….fortunately.
And yes, iPad is a great piece of technology.

Zergling

Are you serious? You are telling me there is no difference in power efficiency nowdays between ARM and x86?

witeken

Where are your facts? Yields are the most tightly secured element of the semiconductor industry, so saying anything about yields it totally pointless other than vague graphs made by Intel itself.

You should also keep in mind that what Intel (~65% margin company that sells CPUs) calls good yields is completely different from what TSMC (~50% margin company that sells wafers, not chips) calls a good yield. Intel’s standards are higher.

Furthermore, yields have not much to do with performance. The reason we have Core M (not Broadwell M) is because Intel wanted to bring this fanless innovation to market; it was the best way to show off their 14nm process.

But you shouldn’t expect miracles. Intel reduced TDP from 11.5W to 4.5W and Lenovo reduced it another 25% to 3.5W. This chip is now being compared against 15W ultrabook chips instead of other 3.5W chips. Of course it looks bad with a >4x lower TDP.

warcaster

As it should. Intel is being dumb here in its desperation to catch-up to ARM in power consumption. I’m willing to bet Tegra M1 (?) and Apple A9 will beat mainstream Broadwell chips next year.

Tom

As an architecture for true mass production, maybe not. But Broadwell M is certainly ready. I’m very much wiling to bet it performs exactly as Intel claimed it would.

You’re comparing issues in ramping production and yields to performance and design issues. They are not the same thing.

frank

“You’re comparing issues in ramping production and yields to performance and design issues. They are not the same thing”

But, you could argue they are so closely linked that they may as well be. Tech is only truly innovative if it can be produced and used easily on a large scale.

ChrisGX

I think your confidence that the Broadwell M will perform “exactly as Intel claimed it would” is misplaced. The standing of Intel’s claims is already clear. They passed off the benchmark results for a 6W TDP part (the development board exhibited in September 2014) as if they were the results of a 4.5W TDP part. Those results looked impressive and would have been if they were attainable on the 4.5W version of the same chip. Small power differences make a big difference for low power/mobile SoCs. The 6W part is more or less unusable for tablets because it will require active cooling – that complicates design and construction and drives up costs. As it turns out the lower performing 4.5W part also has thermal issues so manufacturers like Lenovo have implemented the 3.5W version for pragmatic reasons. Only thing is at 3.5W TDP the chip is only a shadow of its supposedly brutish self.

I thought the same. Lenovo is only one step above Acer in my book. I’d wait to see what more reputable companies like Asus are able to offer.

Joel Hruska

LenovO. Not Lenova.

dc

is that a 0 or an O? and is it always big like that?

Joel Hruska

I capitalized it to make clear the difference. The word is Lenovo.

KD4MGE

Lenova is the laptop geared for women in the Spanish-speaking markets.

RandomCruiser

Lenova is more sexy :). its good for marketing !!!!

SumGuy954

Lenovo laptops were IBM. Lenovo bought IBM’s consumer division. I always thought Lenovo was a good company. Similar in quality to dell. Mainly because of their IBM history. I have always been a fan of the Think Pads. I would say they are better than Asus due to the over heating issues the Asus models I have worked on.

As time goes on, maybe Lenovo is moving away from the standard IBM used to have.

Ultra books are a sore spot for me. I don’t think any of them are any good no matter who makes them. I call those throw away machines.

All the issues described appear to be power management issues, and should be easily fixed with a few setting changes. Or a update to do it automatically. Could be at bios level too.

Bricktop1

ThinkPads are still some of the best mid-tier laptops available. They have the right compromise between price, performance, user friendliness, and durability.

As for Broadwell, I doubt it is a flop. This is just a poor launch. It happens. Remember when Intel had to recall all of the motherboards immediately after the launch of Ivy Bridge.

PulloGorko102

I thought that Lenovo/IBM was just as good as Asus.

bkydcmpr

there is a gap in quality between lenovo brand and think brand, like toyota and lexus, nissan and infiniti. last time I checked it up a few years ago the think brand was still designed in japan.

Luong Barlow

asus is more reputable than lenovo ? this guy definitely haven’t heard of Thinkpad or IBM…..

Samsonthemad

Asus is more reputable than Lenovo. My Lenovo gaming laptop cant touch my friends ROG Asus laptop. Asus makes the best MOBOs hands down and has fantastic customer support. Over the last 15 years I have used many different OEMs for parts and am able to have faith in build quality of ASUS.

othbert

ASUS is one of the only manufacturers that are permanently on my “do not buy” list, after 3 DOA motherboards in a row, the latter 2 of which, fried 2 brand new cpus. Granted this was in the days of the Athlon (Thunderbird), but still… never again.

Their customer support (or lack of) in those days was truly shocking too, consisted of “not our problem” and the retailer had to shoulder the responsibility of negotiating with them for me.

warcaster

Intel LIED about what Broadwell can do – pure and simple.

gary oak

citation needed

Samsonthemad

the Jury is still out on that one. 1 vendors product is not enough sample size.

Roberto Tomás

except that broadwell is already a year late (if you go back far enough in the release schedules)

RandomCruiser

You are wrong :), come on

Abresh Arquah

I doubt it is because Broadwell is being rushed. The last time we had something like this come up, a few years ago, it turned out that it was because the manufacturers had borked up their drivers.

What?

So Broadwell could be slow and short battery life because of a design too thin causing heat throttling, small battery, high res?

Isn’t it what it was designed to do? being in a small device, frugal on power, and high res screen?

Joel Hruska

Fractions matter.

What if I told you that a device that was 5mm thicker and 0.4 lbs heavier would run 20% faster due to less throttling and 20% longer thanks to more battery?

You would *still* have a laptop of just 3 lbs, thin design, and you’d be cracking five hours in more intensive use as opposed to dying just past 4.5.

What?

i understand what you’re saying but doesn’t intel have minimum specs for these things just like Ultrabooks?

dc

Can’t say anything really based on one product by Lenova. We will have to wait for broader adaption.

grand_puba

Lenova loves you

Menno van der Coelen

Yeah I noticed that the last time I bought a laptop all systems had weak points and some making no sense at all whatsoever (High end graphics card with an i5 CPU for instance). Anyway I just had one made at BTO. The only drawback there is that you tend to spend more then you initially wanted.

IKROWNI

What’s the problem with a high end graphics card paired with an i5?

Dan Rizzatz

There isn’t an issue with that, people just assume all chip tiers scale 1:1 which isn’t really necessary.

pelov lov

I wonder what the tray pricing is on these. I expected Broadwell to underwhelm, but if the pricing isn’t typical Intel (read: astronomical), then it might still not be a bad chip. The fact that it still relies on an external chipset is a negative that also exacerbates the power draw/pricing issue. The fact that it’s made on 14nm doesn’t help matters any, either.

If Atoms weren’t so equally underwhelming, shrinking their Core line wouldn’t have been necessary. If Intel didn’t rethink their mobile strategy before, it’s certainly time to do it now.

darkich

Remember me forecasting that Apple A8X will show just how disgustingly overrated Intel is?

And I repeat, this is just the beginning of the end for Intel since six months from now we should see Maxwell Tegra, and a cheap army of 64bit ARM chips.

Once Apple, Nvidia, Qualcomm and ARM vendors hit process node parity with Intel, it is game over!

Perhaps Lenovo just needs to buy a few more companies to make their tech better…

Karl Ermatinger

Yikes! I recently ordered the thing from Lenovo and will arrive in a few days. The article paints as junk. I hope I’m not disappointed. Spent to much cash for that.

Neutrino .

Welp!

Geordie Hutchings

Don’t worry man, this chip is fan-less that’s the point is it not

Sean Mcintier

Just return it and get something after you’ve spent some good hours researching exactly what you want.

stevepug2

Don’t worry. This review is bogus. It’s a great machine.

Dozerman

I’m with the author here in saying that this looks more like bad laptop design than a problem with the proc itself. I don’t know if I’m in the majority or not, but give me function before aesthetics. I’ve carried around ten pound laptops before and not complained and so has my little sister. A quarter pound extra isn’t going to kill you and in the end, if you absolutely just need to have a laptop that is so thin you could shave with it, don’t complain when it can’t best a render station.

Geordie Hutchings

I think its amazing that it can get that fin and be just as good as an i3, not to mention if you look on this state its all about design surface pro 3 at the top beating i7

blackandwhiteohana

Fuck Intel.
They already got way too much of my funds over the past decades.
I buy AMD and ARM at every opportunity.

Ben

???

People are so weird.

Mete Can Karahasan

You cannot make a cpu with 256 registry address spaces conform to the same power gradient of a 6 registry address space ARM SoC, imo. Not physically contrivable, besides all the resource a mobile chip is ironically incapable to harness purposefully.

pdev

Why is the title so misleading? All the issues mentioned seem to point to bad design decisions by Lenovo, not any issues with Broadwell. The system has a fan, yet for some weird reason, it is restricted to 3.5W. It could have power management issues. Most of the reviews seem to be on pre-production systems, production units may not have the same issues. Why don’t you (the author) wait to review production units, may be multiple units from different OEMs all using Broadwell etc and then write an appropriate review on Broadwell?

Marc Guillot

We don’t know, that’s only the author’s guess. What we know for sure is that the first Core M laptop performs for shit (after a whole year with Intel’s outlandish promises).

pdev

That does not paint a “mediocre picture of Broadwell” as the title says, that paints a mediocre picture of Lenovo/Yoga 3 Pro

Marc Guillot

As the only Broadwell device available, it really paints a very mediocre picture of Broadwell.

We’ll have to wait to new devices to know if the problem was Lenovo or Intel itself. Until then all Broadwell devices performs extremely bad.

BtotheT

A 4.5w will struggle with that high res of a screen, let alone one clocked to 3.5w cause the manufacturer cut corners on battery size. Why is a 3.5w cpu/gpu expected to run 3800×1800? What idiots design and don’t test their prototypes..

AA

The problem for poor performance is due to the low tdp of the chip and this causes heavy throttling especially when gaming cause the cpu and gpu will be running at the same time. If OEM were to up the tdp to 6w( Intel apparently gave this option) than performance will be significantly better and should match ulv haswell chips.

RandomCruiser

I can see some issues in Lenovo design. The convertible is clearly rushed and it is not able to follow Intel design guidelines.
Look at Surface Pro 3, as Microsoft finally followed Intel case specifics for thin machines, the device runs perfectly and is selling very very well.
It’s a matter of bad or good OEMs, Lenovo was bad this time.

Finally, someone who “gets” it. If Lenovo would have opted for 6.0W operation and skipped this outlandish overengineering like in the hinge, we would be somewhere today. Intel literally gave their partners all the tools they needed to succeed and Intel does it for free just to sell their processors. Microsoft, who isn’t even a hardware company first, managed to get thinness, high performance and long lasting battery life with a much higher TDP chip, a Haswell Core i5 15 W chip.

In comparison, I do not even get what Lenovo was going for here. They failed to design to a chip, Core M, that uses a third of the power properly. They obviously did not take advantage of Core M’s heavily financed engineering tools and resources that have been easily and freely available.
.
Like any giant, I suppose, the bigger they are, the harder they fall. For one, the Kutcher factor needs to pulled out of the equation: Ashton Kutcher is an actor, not a product designer, and it is really showing here now. Lenovo needs to drop this needless Kutcher hype marketing and focus on what really counts. An actor’s aura will not counteract the laws of science–only smart engineering will. For now, I’m greatly underwhelmed.

Shiny

Well this is pretty scathing without actually showing any evidence of using one…

Joel Hruska

When 4-5 publications all publish reviews identifying largely the same issues across multiple countries and publication venues, that’s a pretty good sign of a problem. I link reviews that appear to have done good work and I reached out to both Lenovo and Intel on the topic.

Shiny

I think you can also find 4-5 that say this thing is the bees knees too however really what we need is some real usage even youtube/screen shots whatever showing it choking up. So far all we can find is 100’s of people doing unboxings and swinging tiles from side to side.
Even something like someone benchmarking realtime a yoga 3 pro next to it’s predecessor the yoga 2 pro. This new APU is such a mystery so far and the reviews are so poor at examining it’s real potential / downfalls.

Joel Hruska

Every review mentioned slowdowns and throttling. Most mention specific problems in Chrome, but no such issues in IE. Every review mentions disappointing battery life.

You are very correct that reviewers can weight things differently, but let’s say I have a group of 5 reviews. Two say battery life is awful. One says battery life is “pretty bad.” Two say battery life is mediocre.

It’s obvious, based on those five reviews, that battery life is problematic at *best.* Nobody likes it. Sure, some people think it’s a big problem, and some people think it’s a meh, but not one person is standing up and saying: “Wow, awesome battery life!”

That tells you something about the situation without putting hands on the system, especially if each review publishes their runtime figures and how they test.

Haswell is good but didn’t hit the hype. I still recall when Intel tried to convince us that DevilsCanyon did hit 5GHz on air, when some of us knew they used liquid cooling to achieve that frequency. And now Broadwell doesn’t hit the hype. I cannot say I am surprised really…

RandomCruiser

I do not expect any different from you, being a well known ARM IP supporter. I respect you but you fail cause absence on self criticism. The perfect ISA desn’t exist.

Joel Hruska

So, a few things:

1). Broadwell appears to hit its TDP targets. Wall power shows the Lenovo dropping into 4-5W range at idle. Since that’s *total* system power, there’s every reason to think that the chip is hitting precisely the power envelopes Intel set.

2). Whether or not it can ramp up to hit peak performance is inevitably going to be a function of its cooling. It’s worth noting that in every case, modern smartphones *don’t* run at full clock speed. Apple’s A7 on the iPhone 5S drops to about 60% clock speed within minutes. The iPhone 6 and 6S are better in this regard but throttling is a fact of life.

3). Agreed that 5GHz on DC was essentially luck. From what I personally saw, DC bought you an extra speed tap, from, say, 4.4GHz to 4.6GHz whereas the Core i7-4770K topped out around 4.4GHz. I know there are DC cores that hit 5GHz on air, but there weren’t very many.

“the history of PC laptops is basically the history of terrible design decisions”

Mostly true, but I would make an exception for top end Sony Vaio’s (and Apple of course). Damn shame Sony pulled out of the laptop market because most of the stuff on the market these days looks like Chinese junk.

I do not know that CineBench is the best choice of Benchmark for 4W Processors, in any event a Benchmark that was cross-Processor compatible (like: http://www.primatelabs.com/geekbench/ ) would allow for a better comparison (bang / buck, on any Architecture).

With Skylake waiting in the Wings they don’t want any teething problems. They want to unload heavy for Christmas and a bit for back-to-School (before Skylake drowns it in 6 months).

This is nothing new. It pretty much exactly parallels the rise of the “ultrabook” and ULV processors with Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge.

ULV promised the same performance at a lower TDP. In reality, Haswell ULV processors perform about as well as full voltage Sandy Bridge processors.
ULV promised better battery life. Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge ultrabooks could barely last five hours on a charge (or more like 3, e.g. Surface Pro) whereas some Sandy Bridge laptops with full-voltage processors could last 10.

ULV is still playing catch-up and improved a lot with Haswell. Core-M will see the same pattern.

danwat1234

Don’t really care about these low powered chips. What about 35/45 watt TDP laptop broadwell chips? That will be interesting how performance/power consumption has improved.

tipoo2

Did anyone expect a 5W chip to outperform 17W ones from just one generation ago? Realistically, anyone with a critical eye would have known this was coming. Wait for the Broadwell 17W parts, that should be a nice boost from current 17W ultrabooks.

Mike Murphy

Because Lenovo. When do they ever take the time to make an exceptional product?

Wtf is Intel doing trying to debut this mediocre unfinished POS CPU just to keep up with the status quo, smh. And I’m sure Intel’s gonna mark up the price on this guinea pig product knowing that it performs terribly. Looks like their QC forgot to do testing. I rather Intel keep pushing the release date back instead of screwing the consumer over just to appease investors.

I’m amused by the comments that declare that Broadwell is flawed. This is entirely unfounded and untrue. It isn’t in any sense at all. The problem is sloppy engineering by the system builders, the OEMs, namely Lenovo.

It was easy enough for Lenovo to offer Surface Pro 2 and 3 level performance in their design without any fans whatsoever but they instead opted for longer battery life. In doing so, they crossed the line by cutting power to the CPU and, as a result, they dramatically cut down its performance delta to these last generation-esque numbers.

To avoid being a blabber mouth and unnecessarily filling screen space, please check out my commentary in the comment section of ExtremeTech’s Yoga 3 Pro article.

WvB22

According to the latest rumors Apple is preparing a new 12 inch ultra book on this chipset. If Broadwell can deliver Apple will certainly let it shine in a new devoloped ultra book. They have the resources and commitment to do the necessary R&D. If no MacBook Air’s (or maybe even iPad Pro?!?) will get the Broadwell design this year, it’s a safe bet Broadwell isn’t ready for mainstream products and can’t (yet) deliver on its promises.

jones19876

It’s quite clear the Core M chip should have never ended up in a premium ultrabook like the Yoga Pro 3.

The issue isn’t so much with Intel’s processor (which said it’s designed for tablets and low-end convertibles), but rather Lenovo went ahead by using the wrong category of chips in their latest Pro product and thought nobody would notice.

Remember, Core M replaces Haswell-Y chips, not Haswell-U low-voltage laptop processors used in the Yoga 2 and the MBA.

stevepug2

This review sounds like a hatchet job. Most of your criticisms are hearsay. I don’t you even reviewed an actual machine. Just an Intel/MS hater. Bogus through and through.

Eugen

3.5W broadwell doesn’t beat 15W haswell and people are FURIOUSSSSSSSSS

rykellim

Hi, I am looking for a new, super responsive and FAST Ultrabook with the looks and feel of premium. The Lenovo Yoga 3 Pro seems like the best fit, until I read all the reviews which basically slammed the device as deadly sluggish and slow. Since this is the case, which is the best Ultrabook to buy then? Microsoft Surface Pro 3? Something from ASUS? Anyone please advise?

henrikdr

Check the earlier version Yoga Pro 2 i7. It is cheaper and it is well build. Surface Pro 3 is a great machine too. Yoga if you mostly want a ultrabook that can be used as a tablet. Surface 3 if you want a tablet that can be used as a computer. Surface is more expensive but if you are satisfied with your device and use it for three years instead of two it will be cheaper and bettee for the envirement.

Guest

Smaller batteries to sell the ultra thin factor. THAT is the problem. Like they’re ignoring the fact that battery life time is actually more important on a laptop than cutting the wright by 100 grams. I mean are we getting weaker with each quarter and only bodybuilders have been buying laptops so far?

Looooooka

Smaller batteries to sell the ultra thin factor. THAT is the problem. Like they’re ignoring the fact that battery life time is actually more important on a laptop than cutting the weight by 100 grams. I mean are we getting weaker with each quarter and only bodybuilders have been buying laptops so far?

henrikdr

I had the lenovo yoga pro 2 for a while until I felt it was not what I was looking for. But I do not feelt anything like the reviewer. Maybe the third version is worse but the second one felt like a solid quality ultrabook. I have an 13″ macbook air, use a 27″ imac daily and prefer mac os x but some software we use is not avaible for mac and I like the idea of a hybrid of a tablet and ultrabook. Makes Windows 8 more logic. Skip Lenovo Yoga Pro 3 and check out the second edition or surface pro 3 that also are great. Did get one of those since it did not weight so much.

Radik Gradenko

Wow, so many dumb comments. Like we push down TDP by 300% and performance is like 50% weaker, geez, that’s really horrible! NOT. You know, it’s still like 150% improvement in efficiency, you think that’s bad, broken, rushed? Mmmkay. What would be acceptable then, 1000% improvement within 2 years or what, seriously?

And uhh, that abomination called Google Chrome which has 5 year old confirmed but unresolved bugs about horrendous battery and CPU management problems is slow, like who dafuq cares, throw it out the window already and use a proper browser! Naturally Google doesn’t give a flying fuck about Windows-specific bugs, they’re pushing their own shitpile called Chrome OS so if Windows looks bad in any case it’s a NET WIN for them. Either way, how Chrome bugs are the fault of Microsoft or Intel is beyond me.

There’s a shitload of people who still live in the 2000s, still think IE sucks as bad as IE6 on Windows XP and still make bad jokes about its slowness but I can assure you it’s most definitely the absolute winner on my current comps when it comes to performance. Yeah, I hate its interface and I hate that it doesn’t have extensions (will be added to IE12), but I gotta admit that it’s just so much faster than ANYTHING else out there, including Chrome, Opera, and the slowest of all, Firefox. DEAL WITH IT. It shouldn’t come as a surprise for anyone with an IQ of 80 or higher tho, obviously MS can optimize the hell out of it on their OWN FRIGGIN OS.

And yeah feel free to compare these to iPads or whatever except for the fact that these things run full blown Windows which is an order of magnitude more versatile and can run any desktop program made in the last 2 decades…

FINALLY we can have laptops without those freakin fans and spinning plates, that means 0 dB and a whole day of battery life, man, I can’t wait for the more polished models in 2015, it’ll blow your heads off, rest assured.

Windows was never blamed for Chrome bugs. Lenovo was. Also, my old Core 2 duo ran Chrome well enough. Maybe you just don’t have enough ram.

Radik Gradenko

So how about blame the actual source, i.e. Google? What does Lenovo have to do with Chrome bugs, seriously?

Cosmin Visan

I bought the new Core M Samsung Book 9 2015 (12 inch demoed at CES). It’s thin and light but man the battery sucks. I had the battery replaced, and the Samsung tech did a video play back with the new battery and told me 5.5 hours. I took it home, did some browsing, video watching, word processing, about two programs running at one time, and the battery lasted 4 hours and 35 minutes (at 40% brightness, balanced power plan). Seeing how this is similar to an unrelated laptop with a similar chip, I’d say the Core M chip sucks…

Cosmin Visan

And mind you, it cost 1400 dollars and the battery life is touted at up to 12.5 hours. OK so no one believes what companies say, but you’d expect it to be at category average for 2014 (7 hours plus) no? Conclusion? Never ever buy a laptop before it’s extensively reviewed on the Internet.

Hyperspacey

FWIW I went “Ha! Clearly this problem is exaggerated”, bought a Yoga 3 11.6″, and watched the CPU throttle down to a maximum of 50% usage @ 480MHz every time I did something remotely intensive, like run Left 4 Dead 2 for more than an hour. It simply flat out refuses to cease throttling once CPU temp drops back to normal levels too. The Core-M processors are probably ideal for some use cases but when you can’t watch YouTube at a quality level approaching that of an Atom-powered 2010 netbook due to thermal throttling it’s a massive red flag.

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The first Core M laptop paints a depressing, shitty picture for Intel’s Broadwell

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